BERLIN (MNI) – Germany’s post-communist Left party on Wednesday
said a majority of its 124 delegates will abstain from voting in the
third round of the Presidential election and not back the candidate of
the center-left SPD and the ecologist Greens, Joachim Gauck.
This makes it likely that the candidate of Chancellor Angela
Merkel’s center-right CDU/CSU-FDP coalition, Christian Wulff, will
emerge as the winner in the race for the presidency.
The German President, who has a principally ceremonial role, is
elected by 1,244 parliamentarians from the federal and the state
governments in the so-called Federal Convention.
Wulff could not muster an absolute majority in the first two rounds
of voting today. In the third round a plurality of votes suffices. Wulff
scored 600 votes in the first round and 615 votes in the second, meaning
that in both instances not all of the 644 members from the ruling
coalition voted for him.
Gauck, scored 499 votes in the first round and 490 in the second.
The opposition had named the prominent conservative in the hope of
winning some votes from the CDU/CSU-FDP coalition.
The Left party’s candidate Luc Jochimsen mustered 126 votes in the
first round and 123 in the second. The Left party has announced that it
will withdraw Jochimsen in the third round.
The withdrawal of their candidate and their abstention in the third
round means it is highly likely that Wulff will win the needed
plurality.
–Berlin bureau: +49-30-22 62 05 80; email: twidder@marketnews.com
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